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B courses have been cut down for years, and yes, the general product has lagged behind preceding years. Lots of kicking the can down the road to the CAF. So, it’s the entire AETC pipeline that’s a problem, not just one part. It’s also not as much the tactical employment part that is concerning, it’s the general airmanship that’s alarming (decision making, risk mitigation, SA, basic flying tasks like instrument approaches, etc.) As I’ve said before, the naturally strong swimmers persevere and overcome quickly, but the average guys lag the fight and it takes way too many “concerning” flight hours until you have a reasonable amount of faith they’re not going to kill themselves or someone else. This is a common viewpoint amongst the experienced members in the CAF. I’m not speculating on what happened at SW or LN, but I won’t be surprised if this type of stuff is a CF, yet is summarily ignored and swept under the rug by “leadership.” Now for you ACC (that’s right, you’re not innocent in this), the quality/quantity of training is bullshit. When I was a LT-young Capt in the viper, I got about 269 hrs/yr in training (not accounting for any combat hours). I now see the same aged guys (who have had alarmingly less AETC training than I got) get 40-50% less flying. Our sims are also dumpster fires. The mission complexity and difficulty has increased significantly over this same time period. You want us to do something well beyond combing the desert (and not finding shit), get fucked! Organize, train, and equip...how do you think you’re doing ACC? Maybe some serious introspection is on order. And I haven’t even had my first beer today...time to go fish and lower my blood pressure. (“You’re cool” directed at the bros executing the training mission)

“We need 69 min POL before you can drop $100k worth of weapons on this desolate pile of rocks”.

There is no measurable or attainable stipulations for withdrawal in their proposal. It’s just a vague “it can’t threaten us” that will be used to oppose anyone who tries to stop sending our kids to die in a pointless conflict that started before they were even born and accomplishes nothing. Anyone who actually supports troops in Afghanistan is part of the problem in our government and military. There isn’t a good reason to be there, or a good outcome, Russia and now the US has proven that.

Just like moving forward forces out of Syria to avoid the cross fire of a NATO “ally” and Russian forces was fought tooth and nail by people who didn’t want us there in the first place... so will this be a “OMG Trump” issue. They want to leave, but they have to oppose leaving until they like the conditions/plan. Fact of the matter is they will never approve of any executable plan Trump has, but they know they can sport bitch the whole time and oppose him while he will leave because it’s what he said and what they oppose. They both get to play to their respective bases and make political talking points and YouTube clips for campaigning. Meanwhile we get to finally stop pissing away combat power and attrition the force no matter which group of political talking heads “wins.” Let’s do this. If I ever go back to Afghanistan it will be too damn soon. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

I think that's where we're at now, with the extra attention on race given recent events (external to the military), and reevaluating of there's any systemic biases/barriers that can be removed. It'll make for uncomfortable discussions, but hopefully we come out the other end with better processes/systems to ensure the most qualified are promoted, and punishments are fair.

If only we could select both the laugh and cry buttons.

Left June 1. The war has been pretty much over since Feb. The token drone strikes have been the best way of us yelling at our unruly children to “keep it down over there.” For the most part it’s like an agreeable breakup between us and the Taliban. We want out, they want us out, and after killing 3 generations of them continuously it won’t be shortly remembered that despite the rhetoric we have the ability to come in the night and take them like the boogie man at will. The only people clamoring for a fight is ISIS-K (reference IDF strikes on Bagram and Kabul). They are just trying to keeps us there because as soon as we are gone they are going to get spit roasted by the Taliban and the regular Afghan security forces. Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

It's easy to say that we're a meritocracy as a military, but if you look at the comments on this forum, it doesn't seem to play out that way. Maybe to major, where if you work hard and are competent, you can make it pretty much on your own. But past that, it becomes a game of who you know, who is sponsoring you, and luck/timing (which can be influenced by a senior enough sponsor). It's the frustration of the guys/gals on the line hacking the mission seeing guys/gals who do exec/aide de camp have their careers accelerated. That in of itself may not be bad, but many of those interviews are done in person, or the application package required a full length official photo. If it was a true meritocracy, no photo would be needed, and any interviews could be conducted as blind interviews, in order to remove non relevant biases. But hiring boards still insist on requiring a photo, which allows the board to apply unconscious (or conscious) biases in their decision making. Any biases in the hiring decisions affects more than just that one job. It can make the difference between getting on/remaining on the fast track for promotion and not, or for command opportunities. The army did research into whether having an official photo in an officer promotion package affected promotion outcomes, and found that it did, with minorities/women doing better when no picture was included in their file. So now the army is set to remove photos from officer promotions, and they are going to rerun their experiment for their enlisted and warrant promotions. https://www.military.com/daily-news/2020/06/25/inside-armys-decision-eliminate-photos-officer-promotion-boards.html I get that we don't have photos in our promotion records, but since they are still used in hiring for career enhancing jobs, it still affects promotions by removing opportunities due to potential biases in the board. tldr: I wholeheartedly disagree with having minority quotas for boards. But I'm for any change that removes biases based on race/ethnicity/gender from hiring/promotion boards so that we can live up to our meritocracy ideal rather than just giving it lip service.

Multiplying by Zero: Our Afghanistan policies may be insurmountably antithetical to Afghan culture And we knew it at least nine years ago. Edit: posted in the Read File in 2011 by Learjetter, I take no credit for discovering it.

From the article: it’s time to build a platform that meets the needs of our SOF operators from scratch. New aircraft with the right tools to provide just what the operator needs on the ground, wherever they find themselves. If we don’t do it now, we will have to react aggressively later to meet the need and likely come up with something less capable and more expensive. Buy the Scorpion.

https://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/politics/505757-the-growing-need-for-a-modern-aircraft-platform-for-special

Another year down, and we’re further than ever from dedicated light attack. For the optimists out there... see you next year.

FWIW the leading edge of new UPT syllabus dudes have only been hitting IFF and the b courses in the last year or so. I’ve seen a lot of posts putting blame on the cut hours and VR/UPTN however I don’t think there’s many WM out there now that are products of those.

Performance is measured through OCO funding.

Last time I was there it seemed to be based on how many little rocks we could make out of big rocks.

I’m all for taking a critical look at the training pipeline, but let’s take a step back from the ‘jump to conclusions’ game and see what the actual causes are of this rash of fighter accidents. Mechanical failure, maintenance practices, weather, human factors, or training could all be possible factors. Let’s give the investigating teams time to do their job and then address their findings with the proper focus and effort.

I will eat my hat the day you get a 365.

The protesters come from "shitholes," are "a violent & illegal mob," study "x-grievance programs in college," are "the enemy" and "deserve to be dropped." Cool cool, sorry to have engaged, I see that your mind is well made up. Honestly it makes me sad and disappointed that you just casually talk about your fellow citizens or just fellow human beings like that. This isn't war, where sometimes you need to dehumanize and "other-ize" in order to kill the enemy; this is America. What I'm arguing for re: this couple and your lionizing of them is that de-escalation of the situation and demonstrating responsible gun ownership would have been a better path. These folks are not heroic for branshing loaded firearms at people on the street walking by their house, with fingers often on the triggers and while also occasionally barrel-checking each other's backs. That's reckless behavior that I know you wouldn't tolerate in a combat zone, let alone what should be the expectation while on your front lawn in Anytown, USA.

I'm confused here @Clark Griswold. I think you're lionizing a pair of barefoot homeowners coming out on to their porch and brandishing loaded weapons at people as they marched by their house during a protest of the Mayor who lived down the block? And with very poor trigger and barrel discipline I might add, I'm glad that they didn't accidentally shoot each other nor any of the protesters frankly. By all means, defend yourself if you are being physically assaulted and call the cops and/or intervene at your own risk if someone is damaging your property, but you can't just walk out of your house and point loaded weapons and people out on the street. This is not what responsible gun ownership looks like nor what responsible home ownership looks like, and I say that as both a gun owner and a homeowner. Standard disclosure so my conservative friends don't have an aneurysm: the Seattle anarchists/CHAZ/CHOP/whatever are f*cking stupid, looting is dumb, and I prefer a peaceful, orderly situation in my city as much as any of y'all do. But those two knuckleheads in the post above are also not helping the situation at all.

Yes....... this. I love the iconic look of the single piece but man if you are just a sweaty individual as i am, its a real pain in the ass.

serious. SOF MQ-9s are the heat. I can get their feed instantly. talk to them on the redline. MIRC them. que them instantly to my SPI. and they have 18 hours play time. and highly accurate weapons. some of the shit i've seen that community do is insane. insane.

It’s an academy tradition during football games to honor those who have passed.

The problem is ISIS, AQ, etc. will always be a transnational problem. It’s never going to work to simply leave somewhere and trust the locals to keep a lid on Islamic terrorist group’s unquenchable thirst for total world domination. So, we’ll be killing these fucks for the rest of our existence, with varying levels of manning and materiel commitments. Don’t worry boys, that RipIt stock will never tank.